Francis Carmody

About the artist

Francis Carmody’s artistic practice serves as a useful alibi to reach out to people across disciplines and technical capabilities to share stories and complete projects. Through tracing networks and natural structures, he would like to get a glimpse of where we have been and where we are going. Carmody’s project ‘Continuous Cities’ looks to the distant future of the planet, combining current knowledge of mineral deposits, surveys of industrial centers, natural resources, and cities with geological projections modelling the surface of the earth and its different trajectories. Thank you to Dr Tim Werner and Trent Walter. 

Carmody completed a Bachelor of Fine Art at Victorian College of the Arts, Melbourne (2019), with a year studying Fine Arts (Hons) at Goldsmiths, University of London (2019). Recent exhibitions include Laschamp Cycles, ReadingRoom (2023), Exposure Site, Gertrude Glasshouse (2022), And Shuffling, Conners Conners, Melbourne (2022).

Caspar Connolly

About the artist

Caspar Connolly is a multimedia artist examining the knowledge shared between nature and culture through process-based, socially practised sculpture. His research into the polysemous object; an object expressing multiple senses and interpretations simultaneously, is central to his methodology. Connolly’s sculptures attempt on one hand, to produce their own polysemic expression of nature, rootage, synthetics, internet, play, and virtual world-building, and on the other, are accompanied by a disconnection from its origins, worldly entanglement, and fraught histories. 

Connolly studied at the Academy Minerva in Groningen in 2012-2013, before returning to Melbourne to complete a BFA Honours at the Victorian College of the Arts (2016). Caspar was the curator/organiser of Cathedral Cabinet (207-2019), and the project The Exterminating Pencil (2020-2022).

Bill Hawkins

About the artist

Bill Hawkins is a Naarm/Melbourne based artist and curator whose practice explores philosophical ideas in painting using a multidisciplinary approach that spans performance, installation and film. Common themes in his work include agency, identity and humour. Hawkins completed a Bachelor of Fine Art at Victorian College of the Arts in Drawing and Print Media in 2015, and completed Honours in 2018. Hawkins is the recent major prize winner of the 2022 Brett Whiteley Travelling Art Scholarship residency at the Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris. In 2019 he was a VCA First Commissions recipient and was a resident in the VCA’s Drawing and Printmaking department. He is currently undertaking study at Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, Class of Professor Andreas Schulze. Hawkins has exhibited at various galleries nationally including: Hayden’s, West Space, Bus Projects, Hugo Michell Gallery, George Paton Gallery, Brett Whiteley Studios, Bundoorah Homestead and TCB. His work has been acquired by the Macquarie Bank collection and various private collections. He is the founder/director of the Melbourne School of Contemporary Art.

Yvette James

About the artist

Yvette James is a Naarm/Melbourne based artist whose practice explores the symbiotic exchange of matter between bodies and their environments, entangling materials such as engine oil, honey, silver, steel, and vapour. For James, “the human body is an amalgamation of familiar and foreign substances: bacteria, bone, chemicals, sinew, plastics, and neurons.” Leakages between such architectures, bodies, and digital realms are studied through sculptural installations to critique the principle of purity. 

Yvette James completed a Bachelor of Fine Art at Monash University, before completing a BFA (First Class Honours) in 2021 at the Victorian College of the Arts. James was included in the Hatched National Graduate Exhibition at PICA Perth in 2019, was awarded the MUMA Graduate Award, the Vice Chancellor’s Scholarship for Excellence, and the Blindside Curator Award. They have recently presented solo exhibitions at First Draft, Sydney, and Blindside, Melbourne, and currently work at the Sculpture Workshop at VCA.

Katie Ryan

About the artist

Katie Ryan is a visual artist who works through a combination of theoretical research and intuitive experimentation with materials. Born in Ireland, she has been living and working in Naarm/Melbourne, Australia, since 2013. Her work is concerned with modes of understanding, looking in particular at the connection between language-based cognition and embodiment. Working sculpturally, she considers the body as a site from which to extrapolate ideas relating to individualism, value and power.
Katie completed a Bachelor of Fine Art with Honours at The Victorian College of the Arts in 2017. Katie was the Organisation Coordinator at KINGS Artist-Run from 2021 until 2023. Recent solo exhibitions include ‘desk, door, devil’ at Caves, Melbourne; ‘The roles are a drag’ (2023) at Working at Heights in Northcote; Co-curating ‘Other Body Knowledge’ (2022), a public program and exhibition on disability informed art practice and accessibility, in partnership with disabled artist Jane Trengove; ‘A message in the collar’ (2019), a group exhibition developed in collaboration with Jeremy Eaton as part of HoBiennale; and ‘Dissecting a violin body’ (2019), solo exhibition of sculptural works at Bus Projects in Collingwood.

Oscar Capezio

About the artist

The Curator

Oscar Capezio is an artist/curator and painter, Director of Al Fresco – Fine Arts Outdoors (est. 2022), and Curator of the ANU Art Collection at the Drill Hall Gallery (2020-). He completed a Bachelor of Art History & Curatorship (Honours, First Class) at the ANU Centre for Art History and Art Theory in 2015, receiving the Janet Wilke Prize for Art History. Oscar was a founding board-member of Tributary Projects, Fyshwick (2015-2018), and has exhibited in solo and group exhibitions since 2013. His artwork is held in the collection of ArtBank, and several private collections within Australia. He often writes exhibition-texts for artists and exhibition reviews for Art Monthly Australasia.